One of the most popular video games in the world today is Chinese. Not that everyone would be aware of the fact, or would care, but that game is Genshin Impact and it was created by Shanghai-based miHoYo. Its style and characters are greatly influenced by anime, and many players might have thought Genshin was Japanese-developed; it is telling that miHoYo is inspired by that country’s culture. Despite being the world’s biggest video games market, China still remains relatively minor as an international cultural force in games.
Video games are one of the few creative media not dominated by the US. In consoles, two of the platform holders are from Japan, while developers in the UK and Europe are powerhouses of creativity. But the world’s biggest games company is Chinese giant Tencent, which is often the target of racism and online criticism. While massive corporations don’t need huge sympathy, as a Briton of Chinese heritage, it does pain me when Chinese games companies are falsely conflated with the Chinese government.
This plays into the hands of the Chinese Communist party, which likes to influence the country’s commerce, businesses and people in such a way as to maintain the illusion that all of them fall under the one-party system every single second. Reality and perception are not the same, however, and it is often more constructive, not to mention more humane, to see how creativity and entrepreneurship flourishes and develops from the ground up.
Previously there was an extended freeze as China’s national regulator stopped granting licences for new games to be sold, but the situation thawed when the government realised the economy was faltering. Like any business wanting to expand, China’s games companies have invested overseas and want to become major international players. Over the past decade, there has been an explosion of Chinese indies and games that are incredibly creative, inventive and unique. The fact we haven’t heard about them so much in the west is because many of these studios only target the domestic market.
And why wouldn’t they? In the vast domestic market, the likes of Tencent and its rival NetEase have grown thanks to local titles such as Honor of Kings and Fantasy Westward Journey. Before a recent crackdown on the video games industry, and tech companies in general, which began two years ago (and which reportedly has wiped more than $1tn in value off the sector), video games were one of the most dynamic parts of the economy.
Brilliant Chinese games such as Self (developed by doBell), Cruel Bands Career (heran&99), and Otaku’s Adventure (Spacelight Studio) are quirky, bold and often contain a distinctively Chinese sense of humour that combines irony wackiness, and an existential loser-dom. This is characteristic of modern Chinese culture, much of which has been cultivated online and via gaming. And titles such as Paper Games’ highly successful Love and Producer, which has you dating four archetypal guys, are indicative of the enormous number of female gamers in the country.
China has pioneered internet games, chat platform games, hypercasual games and has developed apps that contain a deep level of gamification. Whatever you think of these things, there is no doubting the dynamism. Meanwhile, a rich culture has developed online that has seen a dizzying level of linguistic invention and imagination. Yes, there is censorship in China (and it is difficult to take lectures from Americans on this front when it’s a democracy that still bans books and discussions on evolution), but the citizenry has been endlessly imaginative and resourceful in evading the censors.
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However, there is no doubt that under the leadership of Xi Jinping, what was once a more freewheeling culture and economy (from 2008 to 2016 especially) has been brought, in many ways, horribly to heel. This includes a massively restrictive environment for young gamers: those under 18 are limited to playing online games for just an hour a day on Fridays, weekends and holidays. But you can bet your bottom yuan the kids have found ways to circumvent this.
There are concerns about how China’s government interferes in the country’s tech and games companies. But believe me, there is little that these companies or the people in general can do about it. (When they’ve tried taking on the government before, it has ended tragically.) Westerners believe the people can simply rise up and overthrow an authoritarian government when the price of protest in such an environment is simply unfathomable to many in the US and UK.
In the days of the original PlayStation and Nintendo 64, China was still a developing country with very low per capita GDP; nowadays some of the world’s most successful video games are Chinese, and it has developed its own tech ecosystem. I cannot but feel pride in my mother country. It deserves more respect and admiration for what it has achieved and what its people have accomplished creatively – in spite of restrictions.